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STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — “Grains have
gotten a bad rap,” said farmer and
baker Mary-Howell Martens recently,
“But this area (Pennsylvania) used
to be considered the bread basket of
the U.S., especially out in western
Pennsylvania, until (grain growing)
moved farther west.”

Martens
talked to a packed audience about
the importance for health in cooking
and baking with fresh grains on Feb.
3, during her presentation at the
annual Pennsylvania Association of
Sustainable Farming (PASA)
conference at Penn State. Earlier in
the day, she and other farmers, who
are part of a new grain-producers
network in the MidAtlantic region
called the Value-Added Grain
Project, held a grain-tasting event
at the conference, where they asked
attendees to rate foods such as
breads, pastas, cakes, cooked grains
and other foods made from grains
they had grown.

“It’s
a better-quality product,” Martens
said, of fresh grains and especially
of heirloom or “heritage” grains
that are now being grown in the
region, mostly in Pennsylvania and
New York. And, according to several
people at the grain-tasting event,
at which they rated qualities like
taste, texture, aroma, flavor and
other characteristics on a survey,
the amazing flavor was “unbeatable.”
The formal tasting was one aspect of
this grain-growers network’s process
of learning which grains made the
best foods.

At
Martens’ presentation, she said that
when commercial grains are made into
flour, they are stripped of their
most flavorful and nutritious
aspects — the grain’s germ and the
bran — to make them shelf-stable so
they can be stored and sold for a
long period of time.

“You
lose oils, vitamins, fiber and all
the good stuff that gives the flavor
and makes them healthy,” Martens
said.

For
home cooks wanting to experiment
with using fresh ground grains,
Martens said it’s as easy as finding
a source, and possibly buying a
small home grinder if people prefer
to grind the grain themselves
instead of buying flour. Though
Martens favors grinding flour at
home in small amounts (a cup of
wheat berries produces a little less
than 1-3/4 cups of flour), she is
often busy and understands that many
people don’t have time to grind at
home each time.

“It’s
a lifestyle choice whether you use a
grinder or buy flour,” she said. A
variety of home grain grinders are
available on the market, including
from places such as Lehman’s
Non-Electric catalogue, according to
Martens.

Freshly ground flour must be stored
in the fridge or used within 2
weeks, Martens said.

When
trying new grains, “develop a
palette and repertoire to know what
your family likes,” Martens said.
Flour from fresh grains can be used
in recipes just like any other flour
for the most part.

“Fresh ground grains are slower to
gain water, so you must experiment
to get the correct ration, and
expect it to take longer time to mix
the liquid with the flour,” Martens
said.

The
hard wheats are rich in gluten and
are therefore mostly used to bake
breads. The soft wheats are most
commonly used in pastries. Martens
uses a bread machine for kneading
dough as a time-saver, and said it
does as good a job or better than a
person.

“It’s
not cheating,’” she laughed.

Pre-fermenting is important, Martens
said, noting that many of the
artisan-style bread recipes often
mix the ingredients together and
then let them set for at least 1-3
hours prior to kneading. Then the
dough becomes tastier and easier to
work with, she said.

She
makes her apple pie crusts with
freshly ground spelt or wheat flour,
piecing together the crust since it
can be more crumbly.

Durum-type wheats such as the
ancient grain emmer and kamut are
typically made into semolina for
pasta, according to Martens. She
also shared recipes for using fresh
oats, barley, rye and
open-pollinated corn.

Value-Added Grain Project

Martens and her husband, Klaas, farm
1,400 acres of corn, soybeans and
small grains such as wheat, spelt,
barley, oats, triticale and peas for
mostly livestock feed at their farm,
Lakeview Organic Grain, in Penn Yan,
N.Y., but she’s also been
experimenting with growing and
baking food-grade grains, such as
spelt, off and on for 15 years.

The
Martens and other farmers are part
of a larger group of farmer,
millers, bakers, ag groups and
consumers working to develop an
infrastructure of locally grown
grains in the Mid-Atlantic region.
The USDA-funded Value-Added Grains
Project, has been underway for
several years, guided with the help
of Elizabeth Dyck, from the Organic
Growers’ Research and
Information-Sharing Network (OGRIN)
as well as June Russell, of
Greenmarket in New York.

There
is currently strong demand from
bakeries and consumers in the area
for a steady year-round supply of
locally grown, organically produced
heirloom grains, according to the
group.

The
project is simultaneously building a
farmer-grower network along with
creating the markets for the grain,
with the goal of linking food-grade
grain farmers to end-users through a
local distribution system. Each year
the Mid-Atlantic acreage being
planted in bread grains is
increasing exponentially, as more
farmers become interested. But,
according to OGRIN’s website, the
needed equipment and processing
facilities are still scarce,
high-quality seeds can be hard to
find and much of the knowledge base
for food grain growers has been lost
and must be re-created.

The
project seeks to find the types of
heritage wheat and specialty grains
that grow the best in the region,
and in an organic management system.
So far, a few of the grains being
grown in the Mid-Atlantic region
include Red Fife, Warthog and Maxine
(all winter wheat varieties for
bread), emmer and spelt (for whole
cooked grains), and Frederick and
Buckwheat for cake-baking, but there
are others being developed or tested
too.

According to Marcy Tudor, whose
husband, Dale, and son, Nigel,
operate Weatherbury Farm in
Washington County, in western
Pennsylvania, the farm started
growing grain in 2009 because they
needed straw to bed their cattle.
The grain itself was “just a
byproduct,” said Tudor. But one day
when Marcy saw a Kitchen Aid
attachment at the store for grinding
grain, something clicked, she said,
laughing. She and her son became
interested in adding value to the
grain they were already growing for
its straw, by developing a
food-grain product.

Today,
Weatherbury Farm grows a range of
edible grains on 35 certified
organic acres, including varieties
of hard and soft wheat, buckwheat,
rye, open-pollinated corn and the
heirloom wheat called emmer or
“farro” in Italy. They plan to
expand to 100 acres and grind flour
themselves for sale, using a new
East Tyrolean grain mill that Nigel
purchased from Austria and shipped
to the farm. This special stone mill
can grind approximately 165 pounds
of flour per hour. In addition, the
Tudors have recently looked into
acquiring a peanut wagon which they
discovered is a low-cost way to dry
large amounts of grain at their
farm. The peanut wagon should be
able to dry 300 bushels at a time.

The
small-scale processing equipment
should pay itself off soon, since,
according to Nigel, organic wheat is
bringing approximately $20 per
bushel wholesale, but up to $60-90
per bushel for the same wheat sold
as unbleached white organic flour.
He said the demand for large amounts
of the flour is growing strongly
among local Pennsylvania bakeries.

The
Steigman family in Halifax, Pa.,
brings years of experience to the
Value-Added Grains Project, since
their farm has been growing organic
spelt and contracting with other
organic spelt growers for more than
a decade. They process the spelt at
their farm, Small Valley Milling,
and sell thousands of pounds of
spelt flour to mostly bakeries and
buyers in New York.

Martens said that there is a
difference between growing livestock
grains and food-grade edible grains.
She said many grain growers are
accustomed to growing grain for
livestock feed in a system where
they harvest in the fall, load the
crop on a trailer and are basically
done with it at that point. She
pointed out that most farms do not
necessarily have the infrastructure
on their farms for handling and
storing food-grade grains, so there
is some investment that has to be
made to grow edible grains.
Food-grade grains have a higher
demand for quality and sometimes a
producer’s grain won’t meet that
level and then other outlets must be
found for it. The food market
requires grain to be cleaned, stored
properly, processed if needed (such
as dehulling or drying) and
delivered on a schedule when a
bakery wants it, for example,
usually throughout the year.

Additionally, special care in
growing and storage of grains is of
high importance since mycotoxins can
develop on grains and can be a
serious concern for human health.

“It
is not impossible, but it’s a
serious learning process,” Martens
said. “Some farmers are disappointed
when it’s not as easy or profitable
as they thought. ... There is a
learning curve for new farmers, and
(the industry) needs people who are
more attentive to detail.”

She
believes there is a good market for
locally produced grains, but only if
it is a high-quality product. She
said the majority of the grain
market will come from bakers as the
end-users. The secondary market will
be local mills.

Why
does the Mid-Atlantic region need
locally grown grain? For consumers,
said Martens, there are many health
benefits as well as a quality in
flavor and taste in products using
fresh grains. A local grain market
would also strengthen the local
economy, she believes.

Many
bakeries in New York and
Pennsylvania have already been
discovering how much better their
bread tastes if they use freshly
ground flour from heirloom grains.

“A
lot of the bread bakers consider
themselves to be artists,” Martens
said. “And a lot of them are.”

“I
want consumers to value what the
local farmers are trying to
accomplish,” Martens said. “We’re
working very hard to bring these
grains to consumers.”